Configurators, such as GES™ Configurator by Trilogy, are widely used to assist sales personnel in accurately inputting correct sales orders involving a number of inter-related components. In a telecommunications software/hardware environment, when a sales person inputs part of the telecommunications switch/server requirements of the customer the configurator can provide the sales person with additional questions to ask the customer to complete the necessary information for the configurator to determine the order. The configurator can then provide the sales person with a listing of each necessary hardware/software component (or bill of materials) for the switch/server and the pricing information associated with the order. The configurator can substantially reduce errors in bills of material for complex inter-relationships among system components and thereby increase customer satisfaction.
The process to properly develop the configurator can be labor intensive and costly. Currently in a software/hardware environment, a computer software engineer designs the hardware/software component(s) and prepares documentation describing the inter-relationships among the component(s). A configurator system engineer then takes the documentation and writes the functional specification for the documentation. The specification is typically in the form of a plain text document. A developer laboriously converts the functional specifications into code to create the configurator. The code must then be tested to identify errors. The testing is typically done by testing engineers using manual methods or a testing tool such as TestMaster. The process from preparation of the functional specifications to validation of the coding can take thousands of man hours for complex software/hardware inter-relationships.